The irritated tone in which this reply was given was entirely pardonable. It had not been an entirely serious question about whether Whitehall's first ever apprentices would have to observe any special dress code.

But this is new territory. The fact that two government ministers and the head of the civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell, took time out yesterday morning to make a song and dance about the arrival of apprentices in the corridors of power told the world that things have changed. Something momentous is happening.

What skills, for example, does the contemporary Whitehall bureaucrat require? An ability to lose memory sticks and leave the names and vital details of millions of citizens on public transport are the ones that make the news. But there has to be more to central government work than that.

Although they have been exhorting the rest of the nation to train and employ more and more apprentices, the ministries have been, up until now, reluctant to follow suit.

Every qualified school-leaver is to be guaranteed an apprenticeship by 2013 and the government talks about boosting numbers to 400,000 by 2020.

In such a climate, the absence of young trainees at the heart of government was increasingly untenable. Why should the private sector be cajoled into taking on youngsters with no experience if Whitehall was not prepared to?

"It's fairly widely recognised that the public sector has not kept pace with the private sector in the number of apprentices it has taken on," says a spokesman for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (Dius).

"You can't say that apprenticeships are good for the world of work and exclude central government," says David Way, national director of apprenticeships at the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

Which is why, during the final quarter of this year, the government is trying to play catch up. Fourteen Whitehall ministries and departments have been told by Dius that they must set up apprenticeships for 500 young people and adults. It is a pilot scheme, so that number is likely to grow.

Ministers see the move as a necessary preamble to tackling two weaknesses in the apprentice programme: its lack of take-up in large areas of the public sector and in London.

"We have to get our act together in the public sector," the then skills minister David Lammy admitted at the Guardian's further education summit in the capital in summer.

John Denham, the skills secretary, who joined the schools secretary, Ed Balls, and O'Donnell in Westminster yesterday, got in first with an announcement in July that he would be the first cabinet minister to take on an apprentice.

"In September I will be the first cabinet minister to have an apprentice working as part of my staff," Denham said in the summer. "The successful candidate will have the opportunity to gain valuable experience and I hope build a successful career in government."

That apprentice has indeed started and is working alongside other civil servants in Dius, replying to letters from the public and MPs, and helping to organise visits around the country.

The first government apprenticeships are being called "pathfinder" apprentices and the target of 500 has been exceeded. There were almost 1,300 applications for the places available, which were open to employees of any age who were already working in the civil service. The apprentices will be concentrated in the fields of management, business administration, customer service, IT, catering and accountancy.